I thought this was always the case. How did police give out tickets before radarguns? By estimating your speed and then testifying against you in court.

So basically we’re back to the times of the inquisition?

I mean, people can get kicked out o of the internet based on suspicion alone and cops can ticket you based on opinion, just like in the times of the inquisition you could be killed just by having someone that hates your guts telling the authorities you are a heretic, with no proof whatsoever.

Progress? We’re going backwards!

Look at the Ohio Supreme Court verdict, and note the circumstantial details. The best evidence (and here I use the term in the historian’s sense of the word, rather than the lawyers “reasonable doubt” sense) was that the defendant, Mark Jenney, was going 82 mph in a 60 mph zone, as indicated by the radar, in moderate to heavy traffic. In other words, he was zooming past other cars which were themselves going approximately at the speed limit, switching over into the slow lane to pass cars in the fast lane, just barely avoiding clipping the cars already in the slow lane, and generally acting as if he was running a moving slalom course. That is obvious and distinctive behavior, identifiable at a glance (*).

The police officer, Christopher Santimarino, pulled the guy over before he killed someone, and then used his discretion to mark it down to 79 mph, just enough to put the speed below “intentional reckless driving,” or whatever. It sounds like like Officer Santimarino is a good guy, who doesn’t push harder than he needs to do in order to make his point. When it became apparent that the paperwork on his radar gun was not in order, he marked the speed down to 70 mph, again giving the guy the benefit of the doubt. I would guess, from Jenney’s subsequent behavior, that he was probably on the verge of losing his license for other offenses, and that is probably why he fought the case.

Obviously, Officer Santimarino was judging relative speed, not absolute speed, judging the speed of Mr. Jenney, relative to the other cars. It is reasonable to suppose that he could tell the difference between 2-3 mph relative speed and 20 mph relative speed.

(*) I’ve been in a car which was doing that kind of thing– once. Some years ago, I hired a taxicab to drive me from Philadelphia to Morgantown, WV, a distance of three hundred miles, for a negotiated fixed fee. I was moving, and it was simpler than trying to synchronize with the airlines. Running along I-81, which was a bit congested, the driver suddenly became impatient with the “peasants” in his way, and started doing slalom. Fortunately, he calmed down after a few miles, and we turned west onto I-68, where there wasn’t much traffic, and he could simply go the speed limit.